The invention relates to coin processing equipment and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for bag stopping and braking in coin sorters.
Coin sorters are used to sort and collect coins by denomination, such as penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half and dollar in the United States. Other denominations may be handled in countries outside the United States. In coin sorters, it has been the practice to attach bags or coin receptacles to collect the coins for respective denominations. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9creceptaclesxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cbagsxe2x80x9d shall be understood to include all types of receptacles used to collect coins by denomination including bags, bins, coin tubes and coin wrapper holders and other types of receptacles. The bags are sized and defined to hold a certain number of coins, such as 5000 pennies or 2000 quarters. This number or limit on coins in a receptacle is referred to in the industry as a xe2x80x9cbag stopxe2x80x9d. When this number of coins is reached it is desirable to quickly stop the machine and allow replacement of the filled bag or receptacle with an empty one.
As the coins are being sorted, there is the problem of one of the bags becoming filled to the limit, at which time either the machine has to be stopped, or another bag switched into place to receive more coins of that denomination.
Bag stopping is triggered when a sensor senses the last coin in a bag count. The sensor then signals the machine to stop.
Buchholz, U.S. Pat. No. 2,835,260, issued May 20, 1958, discloses a machine in which a rotating core in a coin sorting assembly is driven by a motor through a belt and a worm drive. An electromechanical brake is mounted on the output shaft end of the motor for braking the motor and thereby stopping rotation of the rotating core in the coin sorting assembly.
In Primdahl, U.S. Pat. No. 4,921,463, issued May 1, 1990, electromechanical braking is accomplished using a brake mechanism coupled to a back end of a motor which drives a rotating member in a coin sorting assembly through a gear assembly.
In Raterman, U.S. Reissue Pat. No. 34,934, reissued May 9, 1995, a controller sends a brake control signal to an electromechanical friction brake on a motor and also sends a brake control signal to a second electromechanical friction brake on a rotating coin disk which is driven by the motor through a speed reducer. The two brakes are applied in a simultaneous manner so as to avoid shock loads on the gear train due to torque differentials on the rotating members as they are brought to a stop.
The present invention is designed to provide a novel and improved approach for bag stopping in a small coin sorter.
An example of a such a coin sorter is offered under the trade designation xe2x80x9cMach 3xe2x80x9d by the assignee of the present invention. Prior to the present invention, the function of exact bag stops was not provided in such a device.
This type of sorter, sometimes referred to as a figure-8 type sorter, has two interrelated rotating disks, a first disk operating as a queueing disk to separate the coins from an initial mass of coins and arrange them in a single file of coins to be fed to a sorting disk assembly. The drive for the queueing disk transmits power through a belt to the coin moving member in the sorting disk assembly.
The invention provides a single brake which operates directly on a shaft on which the coin moving member rotates. There is no electromechanical brake coupled to a motor output shaft as taught in the above-described prior art. It has been discovered that in the present arrangement that braking can be accomplished by braking a shaft on the coin sorting assembly, which is not the motor output shaft, without generating an undue torque differential between the coin sorting assembly shaft and the motor output shaft. The braking is effected by a relatively fast responding controller which responds to coin sensors in the coin sorting assembly to count the last coin in a bag count for a particular denomination and stop the coin sorter by signaling the controller to brake the shaft of the disk in the coin sorter assembly.
In one embodiment, power to the motor is switched off and the motor is stopped quickly by the braking force on the coin moving member. In another embodiment, signals are also sent to the motor to operate the motor in the regenerative mode. This reverses the direction of torque related to the present rotational direction until the motor is brought to a stop.
While the present invention is disclosed in a preferred embodiment based on a specific model of coin sorter, the invention could also be applied as a modification to other types of machines, including the other prior art described above.
Other objects and advantages of the invention, besides those discussed above, will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art from the description of the preferred embodiments which follow. In the description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and which illustrate examples of the invention. Such examples, however, are not exhaustive of the various embodiments of the invention, and therefore, reference is made to the claims which follow the description for determining the scope of the invention.